My Brain

Who pays when the mayor goes to Beijing?

   Tue, November 29, 2005 - 3:37 PM
I was just reading how the mayor went to China for some ceremony where they were recognizing that UCSF and some Chinese University were partners....whatever! I travel with my job a lot and I know how the expenses rack up - and I doubt that lil' gavin travels alone. [How would he get coffee?] The city should pay for this? What about virtual teleconferencing? All this pomp and circumstance sucks major [insert most loathed body part here]!



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Tue, November 29, 2005 - 6:15 PM
The city ends up paying for it on the assumption that these good-will trips end up generating revenue in one form or another by promoting San Francisco as a city friendly to the Chinese (and especially their curiously substantial piles of Capitalistically-generated cold hard cash), inevitably leading to an increase in taxes paid to the city so the city can spend more on good-will business trips like this so that the city can rake in more taxes, etc., etc., ad nauseum...Yea, it sucks that there's no-one really making sure that they try to find a room at the local version of the 'Motel 6' before they go and check into their outrageously plush $1,000 a night suites, but these are the terrible burdens our hard-pressed officials must bravely bear up under in their endless quest for new supplies of money. Check out "Roger and Me" to see what happens when a city can't generate the slightest amount of interest in their goods and services no matter how much they're willing to abase themselves before anyone with a couple hundred dollars in their pocket.
-Steve.
Tue, November 29, 2005 - 7:30 PM
ya gotta learn to live with it, it's politics and it's NEVER gonna change...no matter whom is sitting in that office.